The Becoming Podcast | Season 3; Episode 3 | Sarah Kerr on the alchemy of ritual, the necessity of grief + how to honour the "tiny deaths" in our lives

I'm so excited to be welcoming Dr. Sarah Kerr on The Becoming Podcast this month.  Sarah is a death doula, ritual healing practitioner, and trainer, and in her work, she helps dying people and their families connect with each other, and with the innate wisdom of the dying process. Sarah’s work draws on ancient wisdom teachings, nature-­based spirituality, sacred sciences, and the richness of the human soul. She designs and facilitates ceremonies that help her clients and their families to integrate experiences of illness, death and loss. These rituals honour the spiritual significance of what is happening, and bring healing to the living, the dying, and the dead. I came across Sarah and her work several years ago when my curiosity was sparked about how I could better support women through grief, as well as understanding my own relationship with death and grieving.  I've since taken all four of Sarah's classes on Ritual Skills for Living and Dying, and appreciate her as a gifted teacher and wise guide to those of us who are working to reclaim ritual and rites of passage, and contemplate grief and loss. In our conversation, Sarah and I talk about the alchemy of ritual as "energy medicine for the collective body" and how we need ritual to help our souls catch up when massive change has occurred to our physical reality, or when our souls have traversed a radical transformation but our physical reality hasn't caught up yet.  She shares that ritual can be simple and still powerful, and doesn't have to involve all the "bells and smells" that we often associate with ritual.  We talk about rites of passage, and the difference between "change" and transformation - as in the difference between getting older and becoming elder, or having a baby and becoming a mother.  We dive into a deeper conversation around grief and how we are often denied - or deny ourselves - the opportunity to fully grieve our losses.  Finally, Sarah shares what she's learned about life from supporting people through death. I loved every minute of this conversation, and soaked up every piece of Sarah's wisdom - and I know you will too.